Trash posters

[studiot]

One of the hopes with the new software was that trash posting would be reduced (I dare not say eliminated ... oh heaven) , but the rash posters seem to have found their way round the new layout a lot better than I have.

Are there any statistics yet to show if the reduction goal has been achieved?

Or are the mods having to work harder than ever to remove this stuff ?

This morning it seems to be at the same level as before and the trash posters certainly seem to get posted very quickly after joining.

See the screenshot below.

There seem to be plenty of instances where there is no other site activity between joining and graffiti activity.

The actual continuous list of trashtivity was much longer but I couldn't get any more on screen.

 

Edited August 9, 2017 by studiot

[Manticore]

I've been thinking about this too. Seems like it would be easy enough to automatically remove anyone with "http://" in their name before they even get a chance to post their garbage

[StringJunky]

No software will filter direct human spammers. There needs to be a ban on posting URLs below  a certain posting level.

[LaurieAG]

That's mainly in a threads title not a user name.

In the ADD NEW Thread function the last test should be. If the Thread Title contains "http" etc then BAN(user_name), Delete thread, Hide posts and exit

 

[Manticore]

7 minutes ago, LaurieAG said:

That's mainly in a threads title not a user name.

In the ADD NEW Thread function the last test should be. If the Thread Title contains "http" etc then BAN(user_name), Delete thread, Hide posts and exit

 

Whoops! I wasn't thinking there.

[EdEarl]

Someone must be working on an AI app to help with logins, maybe an open source app.

[Lord Antares]

I see an even bigger issue here. You're using Internet Explorer when you have Google Chrome. Ugh.

OT: What if the mods had to approve the first post of any member, as if they were in mod mod queue? Then no spam would ever be seen by the members and some of the bad posters would be recognized immediately, with the option to cut them short if they're particularly hateful, preachy, arrogant etc.

[Manticore]

Does anybody still use Internet Exploder? - the mind boggles.

Most people I know use Palemoon.

[Sensei]

5 minutes ago, Manticore said:

Does anybody still use Internet Exploder? - the mind boggles.

You have to, at least once, after formatting disk and installation of fresh Windows. To download the latest version of Firefox and/or Chrome..

More seriously, here is usage share of web browsers around the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

[Manticore]

4 minutes ago, Sensei said:

You have to, at least once, after formatting disk and installation of fresh Windows. To download the latest version of Firefox and/or Chrome..

If you count smartphones & tablets, Windoze now only has somewhere between 11% and 20% of market share these days depending on how the count is done.

I sometimes use Opera, but none of the others listed. (Mostly Palemoon - occasionally Links if I need speed - sometimes Konqueror, Midori or Qupzilla.)

[swansont]

31 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

OT: What if the mods had to approve the first post of any member, as if they were in mod mod queue? Then no spam would ever be seen by the members and some of the bad posters would be recognized immediately, with the option to cut them short if they're particularly hateful, preachy, arrogant etc.

We've discussed that. It's more work than banning the spammers soon after they show up. Plus it's frustrating for the legitimate members to have to wait around to be approved. Status quo seems to be the lesser of the evils.

It's rare for us to ban a poster after one post who isn't a spammer, so we wouldn't be filtering out "bad" posters. They typically get a chance to change course, even if it's uncommon that they do this.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Manticore said:

I've been thinking about this too. Seems like it would be easy enough to automatically remove anyone with "http://" in their name before they even get a chance to post their garbage

One would hope, but apparently not. I would think that some sort of learning filter could be put in place (like email spam filters) but thus far the admins have not found a tool that will work. Which is unfortunate.

[Lord Antares]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

We've discussed that. It's more work than banning the spammers soon after they show up. Plus it's frustrating for the legitimate members to have to wait around to be approved. Status quo seems to be the lesser of the evils.

Yeah, I figured this might be the case. Hmm, then is it possible to add a captcha requirement before you first (first three?) post? This would remove the need for you to do anything about them, right?

By the way, merging posts automatically doesn't work anymore. I've seen people do double posts like this because they weren't aware.

[StringJunky]

4 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

Yeah, I figured this might be the case. Hmm, then is it possible to add a captcha requirement before you first (first three?) post? This would remove the need for you to do anything about them, right?

By the way, merging posts automatically doesn't work anymore. I've seen people do double posts like this because they weren't aware.

if it's people putting them in manually captcha won't work.

[Lord Antares]

7 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

if it's people putting them in manually captcha won't work.

Fair enough, but I thought all of these (or most) were just bots. One reason that I would suggest is evidence of that is, back on the old forum, I would notice that all of those members were constantly watching their thread. They wouldn't move or go offline. They were there until they were banned. To me, that suggests bots.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Lord Antares said:

Yeah, I figured this might be the case. Hmm, then is it possible to add a captcha requirement before you first (first three?) post? This would remove the need for you to do anything about them, right?

By the way, merging posts automatically doesn't work anymore. I've seen people do double posts like this because they weren't aware.

There is a captcha for registration, and staff is aware the automatic merge isn't in place.

[swansont]

56 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

Fair enough, but I thought all of these (or most) were just bots. One reason that I would suggest is evidence of that is, back on the old forum, I would notice that all of those members were constantly watching their thread. They wouldn't move or go offline. They were there until they were banned. To me, that suggests bots.

I would find ones that were online when I banned them, and they were invariably reading the post they had just made. To me that suggested a real person. They would only be online for a few minutes after the post. Probably getting proof they had posted (screenshot, maybe?) since I assume that's how they get paid.

[Lord Antares]

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

I would find ones that were online when I banned them, and they were invariably reading the post they had just made. To me that suggested a real person. They would only be online for a few minutes after the post. Probably getting proof they had posted (screenshot, maybe?) since I assume that's how they get paid.

Then we've noticed the same thing but we disagree on the implications. ''Invariably'' really is applicable, and you would think that it suggests bot behaviour since it is unlikely that literally all humans would be reading their thread for a couple of minutes (I thought it was longer but you checked empirically). Especially since they presumably post their stuff on multiple fora. You would expect them to leave their post and leave the forum. Even if you wouldn't expect that, you'd certainly expect a variation in behaviour, no?

[Manticore]

This might be worth a look: http://www.spambotsecurity.com/

"Through a new protection subsystem, ZB Block has over 40 new signatures to detect the BEHAVIOR of the latest "HTTP_POST" attack bot families. These behavior detections, along with the weaker but still important detections of the 9 most popular "HTTP_USER_AGENT" names, allow ZB Block to essentially kill off these bots. ZB Block is compatible with the most popular CMSes, Bulletin Boards, Forums, and PHP Scripts out there, and protects from thousands of older bots and exploits not only by name on some, but they way they attack YOUR site."

Edited August 9, 2017 by Manticore

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I tried disabling links for new members recently, but apparently that just disables the button in the editor toolbar, and you can still paste in text with links. So that's not working.

We have a CAPTCHA (Google's reCAPTCHA 2) to filter out bots, plus a custom question in registration. Every registration is sent to the IPS spam service before it's allowed through. Unfortunately the spam service checks registrations, not posts, so those who make it through are not subsequently checked.

There are plugins available to check registrations against a different spam service as well. We used one of those before the upgrade, but it still didn't catch everything. Unfortunately there aren't well-supported plugins to check the text of posts for spam. Anything we write ourselves would have to be maintained through upgrades and software changes for several years, which would be a burden. So we're a bit stuck.

If someone could write us a plugin to send 5000 volts to spammers over the Internet, that'd be great.

[Endy0816]

Are they coming in via Twitter or FB?

[StringJunky]

One idea I've just seen is converting urls to plain text, requiring people to copy/paste the url if they want to go to a website. Do you think that would deter human spammers? It wouldn't bother me copy/pasting a genuine text  link into the address bar if it helps the forum.

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/how-to-prevent-users-from-posting-url-links/

If human spammers have to take a screenshot and it's seen to be only text-based they won't get paid, I presume.

Edited August 9, 2017 by StringJunky

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Lord Antares said:

Then we've noticed the same thing but we disagree on the implications. ''Invariably'' really is applicable, and you would think that it suggests bot behaviour since it is unlikely that literally all humans would be reading their thread for a couple of minutes (I thought it was longer but you checked empirically). Especially since they presumably post their stuff on multiple fora. You would expect them to leave their post and leave the forum. Even if you wouldn't expect that, you'd certainly expect a variation in behaviour, no?

I can only guess at what a spammer is doing, but I'd expect they would post and make sure the post showed up with the proper formatting, etc. and then have to document it somehow so they can prove they did the deed. I don't see why a bot would leave a web page open for several minutes as it went on to do more mischief, but I can see why a human would.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

2 hours ago, StringJunky said:

One idea I've just seen is converting urls to plain text, requiring people to copy/paste the url if they want to go to a website. Do you think that would deter human spammers? It wouldn't bother me copy/pasting a genuine text  link into the address bar if it helps the forum.

I don't expect the spammers are coordinated enough to remember that SFN converts their links to plain text, and avoid us in the future. I'm guessing it's semi-automated and they're just presented lists of sites to register on.

17 minutes ago, swansont said:

I don't see why a bot would leave a web page open for several minutes as it went on to do more mischief, but I can see why a human would.

The software only knows the last page on SFN you visited, but has no way of knowing if you subsequently left to view another site -- it doesn't get any live information from you while you're looking at the page. So if I close SFN after making this post, I'll be listed as viewing this thread for another ten or twenty minutes until my session times out.

[Lord Antares]

43 minutes ago, Cap'n Refsmmat said:

The software only knows the last page on SFN you visited, but has no way of knowing if you subsequently left to view another site -- it doesn't get any live information from you while you're looking at the page. So if I close SFN after making this post, I'll be listed as viewing this thread for another ten or twenty minutes until my session times out.

That explains it, good catch. It also explains why they all ''seem'' to stay for about equal periods of time.
Was it like that on the old forum? Because that's where I noticed it.